I’ve been losing sleep recently over the following sentences, and I wonder if the collective wisdom of ATEG might shed some light on the problem:
1. What I do not like about winter is / are the long evenings and nights.
2. What annoy(s) me most is / are the people who use abusive language in the streets.
My native speaker instincts push me towards the plural verb forms (‘are’ and ‘annoy’), but would I then be violating some style rule?
As far as I can see things, there are three ways of analysing this:
a) Some form of inversion, along the lines of ‘On the table were some glasses’, so that the subjects are actually at the end of the sentences.
b) The possibility that wh-clauses and the word ‘what’ might be able to assign plural number to the verb.
c) If wh-clauses and ‘what’ can’t assign number, the subject complement is somehow allowed to assign number instead.
In connection with hypothesis (b), I’m now worried about the following question:
3. Q: What were on the table? A: Some glasses.
I will very much appreciate your comments.
Regards
Jeremy Day
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